There is something about cooking beets that makes me impatient. It is probably some combination of the fact that A: I love them when they are Food Cooked Elsewhere; B: I don’t like them at home, and C: their…

I love human beings. Not necessarily individual ones, like to talk to, in person, but to watch, to admire, to experience, say, on a subway car full of them. Or to look at pictures of them, in their lives….

Part I My neighbor, Claude, committed suicide last weekend. He was in his 60’s diabetic, super bummed to be riding around in his scooter thing. I always avoided him and his wife, but T, being the friendly one in…

T just passed this on to me (via Facebook….grrrr…..). Wowza, Ms. Purtill! She just made it on to my women I want to talk to list. Oh, the irony of her getting all those “likes” as she writes about giving…

There was a time when I hated anyone who mentioned the New Yorker without irony. And then I graduated from Antioch, grew the hair on my head, shaved the rest, that tired old cliche of moving into the mainstream,…

My interview with Kathleen Norris, author of Cloister Walk, Dakota, Acedia and others, was one of the few that was not run by The Sun. It wasn’t my favorite either. However, this part about acedia and ego was interesting, I…

Seriously. I just can’t be. And yet…I look at the cool, interesting, happy, or maybe tortured, but in any case somehow styled, or, rather, curated, pictures strewn across my computer screen—people I once knew, people I wished I had never…

This essay I wrote about the past was recently posted on a groovy newish online magazine started and edited by some local writers, called The Weeklings. They did a special feature on Mad Men, and included mine. Here it…

Growing up in St. Clair, Michigan was not that much fun. However, there were some great restaurants, at least (only?) to me, a kid crazy for Food Cooked Elsewhere. One place I remember was not a restaurant, per se, nor…

From as far back as I can remember, I have been searching for my place in the world. When my husband worked in a nursing home, there was an old demented lady there who used to repeat, "Is this my chair? Is this my chair?" I can relate to that lady.

My website is bethanysaltman.com, and my email is bethanysaltman@gmail.com.

ABOUT THIS SITUATIONI started this blog because I was so deeply fatigued by waiting for word on Non-Fiction Book Proposal #3 that, for the first time in my life, I needed something to do.

And because I was so over the hope that if I did this, or that, or the other thing just right, and schmoozed the perfect contact, crafted the most riveting pitch, delivered the juiciest proposal, then, then.....